Toledo

Friday, November 7th our group went on a day trip to Toledo. We saw the masterpiece of El Greco, went to some churches, and did some shopping. Other than that, I really don't remember what we did, which is very very sad.

Well, I just looked up in my journal what we did, and that was about it. We did a "treasure hunt" in the cathedral, went to two synagogues, saw Greco's masterpiece, and went to another church after shopping.

So, I'm just going to post up some pictures! Yay Toledo!

Cathedral

View of the city behind us

Toledo

Cloister

Toledo

Portugal Pictures

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Yeah, that's right. I need a huge 50-lb suitcase when I come home for 4 days for Thanksgiving, but I managed to fit everything for the weekend in this little blue bag...and I mean, I had a full size blow dryer, books, clothes, shampoo, conditioner, makeup, everything...all in this cute little bag. Crazy!

So, right after I got on the bus on our way to the airport, I looked out the window and guess what I saw...that's right, an A&M bumper sticker on this Euro car. There is Texas pride in Europe!!

Some of the group at the Gulbenkian Museum right after we got off the plane.

Exploring the castle

The monastery

Convent with the missing roof

The tower on Lake Tajo

Lake Tajo

The monument to the explorers

Eating the tasty little pastries

Lounging in the hostel waiting to leave

Cute little computer room at the hostel

Aquarium on the Atlantic

Big old fishy thing at the aquarium

Portugal

Well, the 30th of October (the day after my 20th birthday...yay!) some of us decided to go to Portugal. It started out just being the 6 of us that had gone to Barcelona together, but then about 20 of the 30 people in our group ended up going. Be broke off into smaller groups though once we got there. Anyway, we'd booked our flights a while back, and right after class we left for the airport. After finding out that security is mostly a joke here, we also found out that they don't stamp your passports when you just fly from Spain to Portugal. Sad day! I was so excited to get another stamp. Haha.

Anyway, our flight was a little over an hour, and after arriving, we hailed some taxis and went straight to the Gulbenkian museum. It had several pieces of oriental art and rugs, pottery, etc. It also had some Monets and a Cassat which were cool. And we learned some words in Portugese...as we used our mix of Spanish, English, and Portugese to converse with the locals. Almost everyone there speaks English fluently though, so it wasn't too hard to get by.

After the museum, we went to explore a castle. This might have been one of the best castles we have explored so far because when we got there it was pitch black (it gets dark pretty early in Portugal) , and there were almost no lights. Plus the fact that it was the day after halloween and we ran into a black cat all added up to a pretty fun little adventure. After exploring the castle, we walked to our hostel and checked in. This hostel was way better than the one we stayed at in Barcelona. Then after checking in, we went to a great chicken restaurant that our professors had told us about and then went out for ice cream before heading back to the hostel to sleep.

Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast. They had a lady there to cook us eggs which was fantastic! :) Then we hailed some taxis and headed to the part of the city called Belem for the morning. We went to a monastery, explored a tower on the River Tajo, and looked at a monument to the explorers. Then we went and got some famous little pastries they make in Lisboa (oh, yeah, we went to Lisbon, Portugal). They are called "Pasteis" and you sprinkle cinnamon and powdered sugar on top. We had a couple of those, and then headed to a convent. The roof had fallen off the convent during a earthquake a while back and killed everyone in the convent, but the rest of it was still standing. When we walked inside the building, there were some random disgusting mummified people from Peru staring at us. We're still not sure what those were doing there. Oh, Portugal!

Then after the Convent, we grabbed some Subway!! (Yay for real bocadillos...I think I'll puke if I have to eat another bocadillo in Spain...jk...it was the first subway we've seen since leaving America...) and then headed to the aquarium in Lisbon. It is the second largest aquarium in the world and was located right by the Atlantic. We explored that for a while and then hit up the huge mall that was next to the aquarium. We didn't spend too long in there before going out to an Indian restaurant to celebrate a couple of our friends' birthdays. After that, we were headed back to the hostel for the night.

Saturday morning we got up and tried to go to a pastry shop that we had been told about, but it was closed. So we just hailed some taxis to the airport and checked in for our flight. We got to Alcala in time to rest a bit and get ready to go see the play "Don Juan Tenorio" which was being performed in Alcala that night. The play was pretty cool because we were inside a castle like wall and they had several stages set up. Each scene was acted out on a different stage, and the crowd moved around to see each scene. The only bad thing was that everybody has to stand for the entire play which lasted about 2 1/2 hours.

Other than the trips I just posted, Stella and I spend the weekdays going to class, exploring Madrid, going to plays, and doing homework. We went to the Thyssen museum this past week which is an art museum in Madrid. It had the "Swirling Dancers" by Degas and also had a few monets, several works by other Spanish artists, and some works by North American artists.

Well, I'm going to try to upload some pictures of Portugal now! I'm hoping I'll have time to update my blog at least once more before I leave for the rest of Europe.

Pictures of Merida, Caceres, and Trujillo

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Me sitting in front of old Roman Ruins in Merida

Outside of the teatro and anfiteatro...check out that height I got!

Roman teatro where we performed our dance!

Old Roman Bridge

Anfiteatro--where the gladiators fought

I decided it would be a good idea to get close to the Romanness of the city. So I climbed a few ruins.

This is the inside of the Roman Art museum

The Temple of Diana

Old Roman house ruins in Merida

Mosaic in the old Roman house ruins...there were a ton of these mosaics. They were amazing. Here some guys are stomping grapes.

Hugging a little boy in Caceres...okay, so he's made of cardboard...and so is the lady behind me. They had over a million cardboard blowups of people that live in the city as part of their fight to win the "most cultural city in Europe" title. Yeah, don't ask. (The people in the window are cardboard too.)

In the Cathedral of Santa Luisa

Statue of Santa Luisa...with her eyeballs on a platter

Dancers in the Plaza Mayor in Trujillo

Random place we found in Trujillo

Merida, Caceres, Trujillo

So on October 25th, our group started the last of our overnight trips. Our main stop was Merida. There we saw the old Roman anfiteatro, teatro, templo de Diano, and the Museum of Roman Art. It was cool to see all of the old Roman ruins because I had never really thought about the Roman ruins in Spain before, just the ones in Rome (which I get to see in less than 2 weeks!!). One of the highlights of the trip had to be me and my friends performing a ridiculous dance on the huge state at the teatro in front of lots of other tourists. We definitely embarassed some of the other students in our group with that little number. Haha. Oh, Spain!

After exploring the ruins and the museum, we headed to Caceres where we spent the night. I didn't really get to go out to explore the town that night because I was working on an ORCA grant proposal that had to be turned in that night. It turned out that everybody just went out to eat though, so I didn't miss much. Then the next morning we walked around Caceres. We went to the Cathedral of Santa Luisa (you need to look up her story on Wikipedia sometime...something to do with taking her eyeballs out...kinda out there.)

Then after we walked around the city some more, we got on the bus and headed to Trujillo. Our professors had never been to this city before, so we got there, and they just set us free to explore for about 3 hours or so. A small group of us went and ate at a little restaurant at the Plaza Mayor, and then we watched some dancers that were performing and then just walked around the city. There were some monuments to Pizarro and some random places we ended up at where we saw some great views of the city.

After that we just headed home. Then later that night we all met up at the mall to find out where Dana (one of the girls in our group) was going to serve her mission. Her parents had received her call that morning, and so she had them read it over the phone to her and then came to the mall to tell us. Her family had just been in Spain visiting a week or so earlier, and her dad had been one of the first missionaries in Spain. So he and some other people gave a fireside over the missionary work in Spain at the Stake center near the temple in Madrid. So it was cool that she was getting her call right after all this had happened. It was even cooler when we found out that she was going to be serving in Malaga, Espana!! (That's the South of Spain where we had just visited a week earlier, right after her parents had left). While we were in the South, we had actually run into some of the missionaries serving there. And Stella and I have a friend, a girl that lived next door to us last year, who is serving in Malaga and just got there a couple weeks ago. Basically, it was really exciting for everyone to hear the good news, especially Dana. So she basically gets to go home for a couple months and then returns to Spain next semester to serve for a year and a half! (in the coolest part of Spain :) )

South Pictures

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I forgot to mention that we also explored a castle in Consuegra. It was right by the windmills.

It was pulling me up, up, and away!

The Don Quixote windmills in Consuegra

Madison and me in the Orange Tree Patio outside of the Mezquita in Cordoba

The double arches inside the Mezquita

The old Roman Bridge...this thing was huge!...for an old Roman bridge, that is.

Here we are in some famous street in Cordoba...there were flower pots all over the walls in the narrow little street.

Here we are at the Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos. The building is the Real Alcazar. I'm taking the picture from the gardens.

More Alcazar gardens

Some more gardens at the Alcazar

Medina Azahara

Eating the "strawberries" off of the tree!

Here we are at the ruins of Medina Azahara. I think we are standing in Jafar's Palace right now.

Coltan and I at the Real Alcazar in Sevilla (different from the Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos in Cordoba)

More gardens at the Real Alcazar in Sevilla

Gardens/Patio at the Real Alcazsar in Sevilla

Building in Sevilla at night. I think this is the Giralda that we walked up 35 ramps to get to the top of the next day.

The view of the rest of the Cathedral from the Giralda

The Cathedral in Sevilla...it's kind of a big deal

The Plaza de Espana where part of Star Wars 1 was filmed

Flamenco dancers in Sevilla

More Flamenco dancers in Sevilla

View of Granada from the tower of the Alcazaba which is right by the Alhambra
Inside the palace of Carlos V right by the Alhambra in Granada. They used to have bull fights down below

Patio inside the Alhambra

My new Spanish friends that I made inside of the Alhambra! (I actually think they look more Mexican than Spanish...so I don't really know where they're from, but they speak Spanish). Alejandro is the little boy that came up and started talking to me. He was adorable! I took some family photos for them there. The mom is taking this picture for me.

One of the patios inside the Alhambra. It is called the patio of the lions because there is a big fountain surrounded by statues of lions in the center and is one of the most recognizable/famous parts of the Alhambra. Unfortunately, the lions were gone for repairs when we went :(

Once you leave the Alhambra, then you get to explore all of the amazing gardens around the Alcazar (the Generalife)...here was one small part

More of the Generalife

More Generalife

A view of the city from one of the arches in the Generalife right before we were getting ready to go

Madison and I at the Moorish baths

Well these are going to have to do for now! I hope you enjoy them! I still have 3 more trips to put up...yikes!